


What have you done?

by saladcannibal



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Blood and Wine (The Witcher 3 DLC), Blood and Wine (The Witcher 3 DLC) Spoilers, Dettlaff kind of but he's dead, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, SUFFER WITH ME
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:01:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saladcannibal/pseuds/saladcannibal
Summary: A scene immediately after Dettlaff dies between Orianna and Regis.Suffer with me. :)
Kudos: 24





	What have you done?

Despite the season, the night air had gone violently cold. While a higher vampire could tolerate much, much lower temperatures, Regis could still feel what little heat his body produced being leached through his fingertips and face into the stone floor. He sat, or lay, on his hands and knees, as if in prayer, before the body, the  _ corpse _ of his fallen brother.

Thinking about Dettlaff lying there… It brought on an onslaught of warring emotions--grief, guilt, anger, shock--all of which swarmed into a maddening buzz in his skull. He wanted it to stop. He knew a way to make it stop. He knew how to drown it out. He knew how to lose himself. He dragged claw-like nails slowly across the stone, and the stone shrieked. It took considerable effort to stay where he was. He didn’t trust himself to move.

And so he stayed very, very still while the wind howled overhead. He sensed Orianna long before the wind carried her scent, long before she retook a solid form and her slippered feet whispered across the debris littered floor as she came closer.

“What have you done?” she asked. Her voice warbled feably. It seemed like a plea, and she repeated it. “What have you done?”

_ I killed him. I killed my brother in blood. I killed the man who saved me, and worse I did it while he was defenseless. _ The words stuck in his throat. When he found his voice, only an echo came out. “I’m sorry.”

She hesitated a moment, stones scattering with her half-step, then came and knelt beside him. She rested a hand on his back, the tips of her nails pressing even through the layers of leather and cotton twill. It was comforting. After some time, when the buzzing swarm had settled in his head (somewhat), he sat up. Dust and blood and tiny rocks stuck to his face. Dettlaff’s body had decomposed significantly since Regis had collapsed on the floor. He looked like a weeks-old corpse, smelled like one too. Orianna’s hand rested still on the small of his back, and he tried to focus on that.

“Why did you do it?” she asked. She was looking fiercely at what was left of Dettlaff’s body, and behind her eyes Regis saw she was struggling with her own warring emotions. Fury and sorrow seemed to be winning. He wanted to explain himself to her.

But what was he to say? The decision had hardly felt like a decision in the moment. Dettlaff hadn’t spared Syanna as Regis had believed he would. Anarietta and Geralt had been right. Geralt had trusted Regis, and it had nearly cost the witcher his life. Regis didn’t want to even imagine having to endure that--Geralt dead, and it being ultimately Regis’s own fault. Dettlaff would have held a grudge, Regis was now sure of this. He would have come back for the witcher eventually, when he was recovered, however many years that would have taken. If it would have even taken years. He couldn’t have risked that. For as often as he denied it, he had long ago learned how precious a life could be.

But how could he tell  _ her _ that? The reasons felt so hollow beside the bruxa. He realized she likely already knew he’d killed Dettlaff to protect human lives, to protect the witcher specifically. He realized with alarming clarity how this looked from her perspective. Regis had killed one of his own to protect someone who had and would again kill one of them for a few hundred crowns, or less. Geralt may even take a contract on Orianna’s head, one day. A contract on Dettlaff was what had brought the witcher back to Toussaint in the first place…

Anger flared in his chest, but he quickly smothered it.  _ No, I’m looking for someone to blame. I’m looking for a way out, to make this not my fault, but it is. I made this decision alone. Geralt had trusted me. Dettlaff had trusted me _ .

Orianna removed the hand she’d rested on his back, and he wondered if he’d lost her trust as well.

Somehow, the most human decision he’d ever made, to take a nonhuman life so that human lives may be spared, made him starkly aware of how inhuman he was. His ‘first life’, he had tried so hard to fit in with his own kind. His ‘second life’, he had made a valiant effort to fit in with his newfound human comrades. Now in this ‘third life’ he felt estranged from both. He had a foot in two worlds and had fooled himself into thinking he’d made himself compatible with both of them. In reality, he no longer belonged in either. Perhaps he never had. He looked to the bruxa. Orianna had shifted her fierce gaze to him, clearly still expecting an answer.

“Anna, you know why,” he said slowly. “He murdered four humans--and countless others now with that attack on Beauclair.. I couldn’t take the risk… I couldn’t…”

Her face softened with pity. “It’s not murder, Regis. They were humans.”

“Doesn’t that count? Aren’t they worth just as much as we are? If we consider--”

She held up a hand. “Please, don’t philosophize at me. Not now. The answer is simple: no. No, they are not worth as much to us as we are to each other. You know I don’t believe humans should be put through unnecessary suffering. We agree they shouldn’t be kept in captivity or killed without reason. But don’t extrapolate that further. They are not the same as us.  _ They _ know that. Your dear witcher knows that. They gladly kill us when they can, your friend especially. I don’t think, if you were to have a relapse, he would hesitate even from hunting you.”

Regis clenched his fists in his lap. “I don’t accept that. I don’t believe a word of that,” he said. “I don’t accept that we’re so different from the other races of this world. We’re from somewhere very different, but we are here  _ now _ . We are all here now, and we must live together.”

“You’ve spent far too much time amongst them,” she said with a frown. “I’m going to be very honest with you now, and I don’t think you’ll like hearing what I have to say. Please, just listen and try to understand. I think you’re trying to run away from your past, pretending to be human or at least something close to human. You were innocent and naive once, and I remember well who you were before you first tried blood. You can’t ever be him again, so now you’ve invented someone else.”

“I don’t think,” Regis pronounced very carefully through clenched teeth, “that it matters whether you are right or not. It doesn’t change  _ this _ .” He gestured to Dettlaff without looking. He didn’t want to see the body any longer. He wished he had left with Geralt.

“Perhaps it doesn’t. But it gives you something to think about. It gives you something to mull over until you’re able to return to us… You know you can’t stay here.”

“I imagined not.” He took a long deep breath, earning him a withering look from Orianna. “It is calming,” he explained, “even if entirely unnecessary.” And breathing was, both calming and unnecessary.

“You imitate them without even thinking… Maybe exile won’t be as painful for you as for others.”

“Do we have to call it exile?”

“That’s what it is.”

“Well, technically, I don’t  _ have _ to leave. I could choose to stay and simply accept the consequences. Ah, there we go. Now you see for yourself, a deep breath does calm the nerves.”

“I’m trying to show you how much you exasperate me in a way you can still understand.”

“Indeed… How long do I have left here, in Toussaint? If you had to guess.”

She screwed up her face and looked up at the stars and the ravens flying overhead. “Not long. A couple weeks? A couple months at most. Everyone will want proper time to mourn Dettlaff’s passing before they’re concerned with you.”

“A couple weeks is quite a long time… Well. When compared to the urgency of everything else that has been happening here.”

“But you’ll be gone for an eternity.”

“I know… Will you still be here, when eventually I’m able to return?”

“I will. I promise you that.”

He nodded. “You...don’t hate me, then?”

“Right now, I do. Right now I feel like you’ve ruined everything, for yourself, for me, and for the rest of our cousins here in Toussaint. But you’ve been my friend for ages. By the time you return, I don’t think I shall hate you anymore.”

“I see. Well,” he stood and adjusted the strap on his bag without looking at the body. “I don’t wish to be here any longer. Anna… Thank you. For your friendship over the years, and for not hating me at some indeterminate time in the future.”

Orianna nodded, eyes gleaming in the dark. “Stay safe, old friend. Try not to befriend any more witchers where you go next. I swear you must have a death wish or something.”

“It is a possibility I haven’t ruled out,” he mumbled, more to himself than to her. He shifted into mist and sped away, returning to his graveyard unaware that this was the last time they would meet.


End file.
